Tag Archives: pamplona

Boy, did ever get to know the person I interviewed for this week’s installment of “The Strangers Like Me” well. We didn’t stay in the same hostel like the other people I typically interview. Nope, it was more like we slept on the street next to piles of trash, in an ATM vestibule and at a bus stop on a single night in Pamplona. Why? Despite both arriving three hours early to the station, we missed the same bus to Paris that ran from the Spanish town famous for the Running of the Bulls. (Blog post on that festival forthcoming.) That’s what happens when a bus station chooses not to post an up-to-date schedule of departures and hires unhelpful transportation officials.

With hostels all booked up and the bus station closing at midnight, we faced the harsh reality that we would be spending a night roughing it in the streets among all the drunken revelers partying until sunrise. Alone, I would’ve been petrified, but I was so glad to have Ana with me for this experience, having only met her after we both realized our bus left Pamplona without us.

We frantically booked a flight for the next day while in a bar blaring Jennifer Lopez at 2 a.m. We laughed hysterically about our exhaustion. We sang Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” to ourselves — ironically, of course. But honestly, despite all headaches, what a wonderful place the world truly is that two strangers could lift each other up in a traveler’s worst-case-scenario situation. She might have been a stranger, but she was a stranger … like me. Here’s to hoping our paths cross again soon, Ana!

Meet Ana from Chicago, Ill.

Where’d I meet her?Pamplona, Spain

Why she’s in Europe?
She’s doing a two-month research program in Madrid, and she was looking for a weekend adventure.

Where else would she like to go?
Somewhere to see the Aurora Borealis — the more exotic the location, the better.

Why does she believe schools should teach students more about empathy?
“It’s not as much as a focus, especially in America where it’s always you, the individual. You work as hard as you can, and it’ll be worth it in the end. I don’t think that the impact that people have on each other is really emphasized anywhere.”

What’s on her bucket list?
She wants to do a poetry slam and paint something large, abstract and colorful that could go on a wall.

What’s the weirdest thing she’s ever done?
“Once I went to the mall with my friend, and we were just having a really bad week. Everything was so hard, and we were like, ‘I just want to get out of here.’ So we went to the mall and went up to random people and asked them, ‘If you had a super power, what would it be?’ They had interesting responses. My favorite one was from a girl who said, ‘I would want to have all the candy in the world. That would be my super power.’ I was like, ‘Would you share it with people?’ And she was like, ‘Nope, no one can have candy except for me.'”